Observations

Open to Buy is essentially a financial budget for retail merchandise. Used correctly and diligently this will greatly improve the financial performance of your retail operation. Open to Buy involves a planning process that is future orientated, provides you assistance on how much merchandise to buy, and provides benchmarks for evaluating and adjusting future plans. The business goal is to stock the right amount of products at the right time, thus reducing markdowns and maximizing profits. Fashion and seasonal merchandise benefit from this plan more than everyday stock. The reason being, is change, you need the right tools to forecast the appropriate and specific type of merchandise that will sell.
Taking the time to form a realistic plan will give you the numbers you need to maintain the correct amount of inventory and improve your overall purchasing power.

Open to Buy is available in many retail software packages as an add-on module. Only a few software companies contain it in their core package, but with the right knowledge and a little research you can set up your own Open to Buy plan in a simple spreadsheet.

To learn more about Open to Buy here are two informative articles that give useful examples to better understand the full range of planning.

Retailing: What is an Open to Buy

Open to Buy Planning: Controlling Your Inventory

WhizBang Training is an excellent resource for building rock solid strategies that will bring your business to the top. Here you will find proven tips that help you in areas of websites, marketing, staff development, sales, customer service, store operations and inventory management. WhizBang also provides free reports that pertain to retail businesses, retailer resources, technology tools and a weekly newsletter that offers success tips. Have you ever wondered how to keep your staff from calling into work or how to make that great first impression to a customer? Visit WhizBang Training and find the answers to these questions and many more.

It’s a fact that over 90% of small businesses fail due to lack of knowledge or skill to run their businesses effectively. The Retail Mastery System provides you with the information you need to make your business successful. The system was developed by Bob and Susan Negen, which have over 35 years combined retail experience. The information, contained in 11 separate units will give you tools and tactics for sales, staffing, financial, inventory and much more. View great videos by Bob and learn more about the great benefits by clicking here to visit the website.
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The availability of Mac OS X-friendly Point of Sale solutions is giving Apple VARs a new window into small businesses. Retail and restaurant outlets looking for good-looking hardware more and more buy the Apple designed hardware, together with POS software such as XSilva Lightspeed (I will blog about this product in a separate post later). Besides the Apple hardware and the POS software, Mac resellers earn extra money with networking and typical Point of Sale devices such as barcode readers and receipt printers.

Read more at Apple VARs Cash In On Point-of-Sale Solutions

Biometrics (ancient Greek: bios =”life”, metron =”measure”) is the study of automated methods for uniquely recognizing humans based upon one or more intrinsic physical or behavioral traits.
In information technology, biometric authentication refers to technologies that measure and analyze human physical and behavioral characteristics for authentication purposes. Examples of physical characteristics include fingerprints, eye retinas and irises, facial patterns and hand measurements, while examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include signature, gait and typing patterns.

Source: Wikipedia

More and more point of sale systems come with support for biometric readers. As you know, speed is king in the POS world, and biometrics help improving the service speed at the counter. The biometric readers are used for two purposes: to authenticate employees and to authenticate customers.

The fingerprint scan is most widely used for authentication of employees, as it is a fast and inexpensive biometric technology. Different from other technologies such as the MSR or the Dallas key, employees don’t have to carry a token with them which can be lost, broken or transferred to another person.

Few retailers use biometrics for authenticating customers; and most of the users have a fixed group of customers such as school canteens, sports events, etc. Also in this case the fingerprint reader is used mostly, but there are special situations requiring other techniques. Iris scanning is the most accurate biometric, but systems are more expensive, slower, and can be perceived as intrusive because a beam needs to scan the iris. Self- service kiosks usually implement facial recognition as it is a passive technique. However, it is exactly this property that raises concerns about privacy.

You want to buy a POS system and don’t know where to start? Or you have tried out and even purchased 10 different EPOS solutions and don’t know where to look for the right software and hardware? You’re facing a difficult task, as there are thousands of solutions available in the market. In this post I will try to give you some tips to keep in mind when searching for the right solution.

First of all, I will have to warn you that the perfect solution for your business might not exist. Though the features and options offered by modern EPOS systems will overwhelm you, you will find many of them of little use. Keep the focus on the most important features you must have, and then go through the once would be nice to have. You will have to compromise or custom build your POS.

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In the current competetive markets, pricing is crucial. Yet, I have found that many small firms often do not have well-conceived pricing plans. And many such firms seem to panic (or ignore the problem) when large discount-oriented retailers enter their trading areas.

This is not necessary; small retailers can prosper in today’s discount-oriented environment, as long as they have a good understanding of their niche in the marketplace.

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By Jerry Wilson

After over 25 years of consulting and helping business owners like yourself analyze their business and decide to invest in a point of sale system I have found that many reasons drove their decision. I have seen their problems, listened to their complaints and caught quite a few employees taken extra benefits directly from the cash register. To simplify things just a little, let’s look at the top 10 reasons you need a point of sale system.

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[Via Don't Back Down]